An Unavoidable Presence - Jonah 1:1-17

Introduction

I once heard a story of a woman who every year at Christmas gave her children the same gift. Over the course of the years the children would look for this gift from their mother every Christmas because without fail she would give the same gift. The kids who became adults called this gift from their mother the unavoidable present. There was no way around it no matter how many times their mother gave it, she persisted and insisted every year giving her children the same gift. Every Christmas she gave her children a Bible. She would notice that the Bible’s she gave them would be sitting somewhere collecting dust. So she would get the Bible’s, dust them off and wrap them every year and give them to her children. As they came to call the gift the unavoidable present she told them yes it is the unavoidable present that will teach you about His unavoidable presence.

She taught them no matter where you go, no matter how far you try to run; you will always run into God no matter where you turn. She told them the sooner you learn to recognize Him the better off you will be in your life.

In Christendom there are two schools of thought concerning soteriology which is the study of Salvation. In the pentecostal persuasion is the thought that if you die having confessed Jesus as Lord but you sinned and died an unrepentant sinner, heaven would not be your home. There are some evident questions about this doctrine concerning salvation. And then in our school of thought of the Baptist church is the doctrine that once you are saved you are always saved - since Scripture says in John 10:28 and I grant to them eternal life and no one can pluck them out of my hand. One day I’ll do a teaching on this in Bible Study to teach both schools of thought because you need to know both. You can’t defend what you believe if you only know one side.

But particularly when it comes to us Baptist folk who hold to the doctrine that once we are saved, we are always saved… at times there becomes a certain liberty that we take as a result. There are preachers that do whatever they want to do and don’t do what they don’t want to do because that famous phrase “I’m the pastor.” As if the pastor is only accountable to God and thus judgment is delayed until he is dead. There are some parishioners who live lives not yielded to the will of God but only to what they want and how they want it seemingly making the Scriptures not to be profitable for correction as Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16 but Scripture becomes profitable only to take the Scripture and blame the disobedience in our lives on God and somehow spirtualize such disobedience to somehow make it Godly.

And we do these things at times because man can’t always see through those things. And so we will sometimes fool man because man can’t hold us accountable for what man doesn’t know. So if someone is crooked they could convince you up and down that they are not because the man can only look at the outward appearance of what we want them to see. But God sees the heart.

It’s sort of like this. I don’t know about you but for me there were times that when I was misbehaving somewhere with my parents there were times I’d receive the consequences for my actions right then and there. If we were around other family members or in the car and I was acting out I’d get popped right there. But there were other times when either of my parents couldn’t get me right there so I would hear that famous statement, I’m sure some of you heard it to “wait until we get home.”

And it’s kind of the same way with God. There are times when we will receive the consequences for our actions right away. But there are other times when consequences are otherwise delayed or rendered in a manner where the masses can’t see. But the reality is disobedience to God never goes unnoticed by God even when man can’t see it. There comes a point in time where every man must choose will I yield to my will or will I do what thus saith the Lord?

Body

This is the dilemma with Jonah. God has told Jonah to go to Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the same Assyria that would lead the Northern Kingdom of Israel into exile. Jonah had prophetic insight to know what was to come out of Nineveh and so he didn’t want to go. It sort of reminds me at times of the danger in our own city and the subsequent fear that we may have at times when its time to go and witness. Nineveh was an evil city with a lot of people. So instead of Jonah being obedient to go where the Lord told him, he fled to Tarshish. He had some people there - he wasn’t going to the place where he wasn’t sure of the outcome. These people would prove not to be very friendly to Israel so he would not go. Imagine God telling you to go and speak to somebody that can’t stand your guts.

And so God said okay, Jonah, you know the story God sent wind and the waters raged insomuch that the ship was about to break. This is clearly not going to be one of those times where the consequence of sin is not visible by others. They were going to know something